I read a fair few posts about the horrors of Alzheimers disease/Dementia and most of them seem to imply that the person with this condition assumes a babbling, pitiful state that no one should have to endure.
I want to 'put the record' straight from my perspective. Yes aAlzheimer's is a terminal health condition. It affects the most important of our organs (the brain) and its impact can indeed be devastating but it does affect each individual differently. It is wrong to put all those with the condition in the same pot labelled 'babbling idiot'. They are not. In essence they are still the person they always were, but one has to dig a little deeper to find them and to try to view the world from their perspective. Like life in reverse if you like. As our children grow and learn and their cognitive function improves, those with dementia shrink and their cognitive functions diminish.
I have observed and loved both my parents through this condition.
My late father Doug, was a proud, handsome, arrogant, clever, man with an enquiring mind and a sharp wit. He was used to being in charge, was strict but usually fair, and rather emotionally constipated, in that he found it hard to express affection/love (like many of is generation I would guess). When he first began to lose his memory he was angry and frustrated by what was happening to his brain. In his last year he found being cared for extremely difficult, tortured by his loss of liberty and he became angry and sometimes aggressive as a consequence. I beleive he always had a temper which he kept very well under control, but dementia seems to strip people of the finesse of the social dishonesty that many of us have to live by, lay them open and his temper became more apparent.
He did though became more affectionate and told me that he loved me so many times in his last years (something I never remember hearing as a child).
The condition took his life eventually. In truth he slowly starved to death, forgetting or refusing to eat and becoming smaller and smaller. Not a spectator sport and I was very anguished by his demise, because I knew the man he was.
My dear Mum is quite different. She is now in the latter stages of the condition. A good, warm, loving woman who spent her entire life looking after others and has accepted being cared for far more willingly. She likes the banter and having been quite buttoned up in life (I never once heard her swear) she became funny, outrageous and very rude in an extremely comical way. It's not often one hears ones Mum singing 'While Shepherds washed their cocks by night' at the Christmas carol concert!!!
I have spent some of the happiest and most meaningful times with her SINCE she was diagnosed, knowing that every day is precious as I watch her lose so much of herself. However she is largely content and even though her speech is very disordered and largely incoherent we continue to have some wonderful conversations and laugh out loud moments. Yes she is incontinent and can no longer feed herself but she is not aware of that, it does not haunt her.
Don't get me wrong some days I could (and do) sob. She can be difficult and surprisingly strong when essential care is being given, but she is genuinely delightful and I am very lucky to have had her in my life for so long. She too eats less and less and is shrinking before my eyes.
Of course I would prefer that neither of my parents had succumbed to a mixed dementia, but they did. It is a condition that will affect most of us in some shape or form as people live longer, but what I am trying to say is that whilst there are times of real gut wrenching sadness and anguish, these can be and often are tempered with moments of real wonder and delight. I never felt I have lost my parents to the disease.
It is the hand that they were dealt and with kindness and a genuine regard for the person that dementia has shaped they are not less; just different.
With or without dementia they are the parents that I love, still worthy of respect and kindness and still able to experience moments of real joy.
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